Why London's bright young things are heading for the suburbs

Central London may have become a theme park for the mega-rich but a new generation is annexing fresh areas of the capital. Richard Godwin finds a party in the ’burbs

Tuesday 5 November 2013 11:33 BST

On the Northern line the other day I overheard three lads arguing about where they were going to live. It seemed their landlord had put up their rent in Caledonian Road and now they all had to clear out. Total mare.

I guessed they’d probably moved to London specifically to work, since one of them got confused between Clapham and Clapton (fatal!). Their patter suggested they were recently out of uni and from their brogues and Beats headphones, it looked like they were already on okay salaries. Only, when it came to house-shares, it seemed their options were pretty limited.

“Thing is, I really want to be on the Piccadilly or the Central line, ’cos I work in Holborn,” said the first guy.

“Mate, you’re just going to have to get used to an hour commute. It’s standard in London,” said the second.

Someone suggested Putney. “Full of wankers and Australians!” Brixton? “Well expensive!” Archway? “Nnnnngh… a bit dull, isn’t it?” Then one of them said one of his mates lived in Southgate and the commute wasn’t thaaaaat bad. “It’s only Zone 4!”

And I must admit, that surprised me. If I was starting out my career and a Zone 4 suburb was the only place I could afford to live, I’d have found that kind of depressing. In fact, I might have tried my luck in Bristol or Leeds instead.

London’s changing. Well, London’s always changing, that’s its beauty, its constant regeneration. Walk around Paris or Rome and they feel like cities for fiftysomethings. That’s why young French and Italians flock here. The constant refreshment of the creative gene pool keeps things interesting. When I finished university a decade ago, pretty much all of my year group moved to London to start their careers, whether they had roots here or not. Moving to the capital was simply what you did if you had a bit of ambition.

However, there’s a growing sense that London is changing irrevocably. The New York Times correspondent Michael Goldfarb caught the mood in a much-discussed piece called London’s Great Exodus, where he detailed what happens when “property in your city becomes a global reserve currency”. You can’t afford to live there any more. This weekend, the influential Times columnist Caitlin Moran wrote of a more specific problem: a city that had become a sort of theme park for the wealthy, so much so that young people will no longer flock there.

So, following the gentrification of the inner boroughs from the Nineties onwards, we could be seeing a new phase. London is becoming more like Paris with its chi-chi interior and its sketchy banlieues on the perimeter. Pretty soon, Zones 1 and 2 will be overrun by Céline concessions and branches of Burger & Lobster for Midwestern tourists and Saudi financiers. The poorer elements will be shoved outwards to do their shopping with blue plastic bags and eat their non-gentrified beef. And by all measures, the poorer elements will include the young.

Fortunately for London, the young are resourceful and there’s still enough in this city to keep them coming. In an attempt to track these social shifts, a BBC survey earlier this year came up with seven new classes — from the “precariat” (those living below the poverty line) to the “elite”. The aspiring young mostly fell under the category of “emergent service workers”, defined as “a new, young urban group which is relatively poor but has high cultural capital, ie, educated and ambitious. Using this data, the property website Rentonomy mapped London and found that this group dominated in areas such as Dalston, Bow, Brixton and Walthamstow. That’s more or less what you’d expect.

And of course, it is youth culture that helped turn a place like Dalston, once an unassuming place of butchers and nail bars, into a creative furnace that it is today. Now it is being pushed out, it alights on other areas dominated by the “precariat” — places such as Forest Gate, South Tottenham, Deptford and Walworth. You can see the odd advance parties, brooding in Harringay, dreaming in Earlsfield. Maybe even the suburbs we once fled.

A lot of these areas can do with a little investment of youthful optimism and creativity. Who needs Zone 1 anyway? Let’s build our paradises in Zone 3! Hopefully, the financiers and cupcake magnates will stay away this time. At least until the bubble bursts and we can storm the mansions in Holland Park.

The new hipster hotspots

GREENWICH BORDERS

(Deptford)

A creative haven. The Deptford Project, a Sixties train carriage-turned-art space has brought an arty vibe to the high street. Even Cressida Bonas used to hang out here, at the Laban Dance Centre. The nail bars, Vietnamese cafés and pie-and-mash shops ensure it’s not pretentious. The Dog & Bell pub has a string of Belgian beers. It’s in Zone 2, seven minutes by train to London Bridge.

Price of a four-bedroom house to rent, £475 per week

UPPER STOKEY

(South tottenham)

Just up the road from the yummy mummies of Stoke Newington, South Tottenham is in Zone 3 and on the Overground for easy access to Hackney. There are plenty of Caribbean and Turkish joints. The River Lea is nearby, as are the artist’s studios in Blackhorse Road and Walthamstow Village.

Price of a four-bedroom house to rent, £507 per week

KENNINGTON EAST

(Walworth)

Look beyond the Elephant & Castle shopping centre and there’s a thriving high street. And best of all it’s in Zone 1. Walworth Road has great Colombian cafés and Dragon Castle, home of the best Cantonese food in London. The area caters to cyclists, with Cycle PS on Newington Butts offering bike services.

Price of a four-bedroom house to rent, £675 per week

HACKNEY FRINGE

(Forest Gate)

Idris Elba and Plan B were born in this green part of north-east London. Westfield Stratford City is just over a mile away. The railway station has a service to Liverpool Street via Stratford and it’s in Zone 3. Crossrail is on its way. Cafés are opening in Woodgrange Road, previously dominated by betting shops.